Good to know that things are working now.ajnk: so do you mean the latest yonggun kernel can boot off an ext2 partition? I remember the previous one only takes ext3 ...

I don't know the answer to your question as I enabled the journal (tune2fs -j /dev/hda1) before inserting the CF into the Z. I left journaling off while copying about 2.5Gb of data to it (the recovery from the laptop) - it sped things up A LOT and stopped my laptop from crashing. I almost looked like the CF was thrashing - but it's memory not a disk ?!?!

Also edited /etc/fstab on the Z to add the noatime option to the filesystem mount - to turn off recording off access times - again should help performance.

you will find that a file copy using tar, rsync or cpio will be different.. say, for example, a directory had loads of files in it and the directory occupied lots of blocks, but then most of the files were deleted, the directory's usage wouldn't diminish. back to the original size.

when you mkfs, you can specify how much of the disk should be reserved - the default IIRC is 10% but on large disks that's often more than necesssary. On a 100GB+ disk I'll drop it to 5%, on a 750GB+ I'll use just 3. DONT set to 0 because it'll cause fragmentation as space runs out. You can change the % with tune2fs.

--edit--if you're moving debian from one part'n to another you may need to flash a different kernel, as the location of the root part'n is wired in at build time. See the multi-boot thread on debian for details of the different kernels to be used for different root locations.

you will find that a file copy using tar, rsync or cpio will be different.. say, for example, a directory had loads of files in it and the directory occupied lots of blocks, but then most of the files were deleted, the directory's usage wouldn't diminish. back to the original size.

when you mkfs, you can specify how much of the disk should be reserved - the default IIRC is 10% but on large disks that's often more than necesssary. On a 100GB+ disk I'll drop it to 5%, on a 750GB+ I'll use just 3. DONT set to 0 because it'll cause fragmentation as space runs out. You can change the % with tune2fs.

--edit--if you're moving debian from one part'n to another you may need to flash a different kernel, as the location of the root part'n is wired in at build time. See the multi-boot thread on debian for details of the different kernels to be used for different root locations.

Thanks for the explanations, speculatrix!

So, I guess that I can

1) swap out internal drive, then 2) reflash kernel from SD card, then 3) let 3200 boot up to new CF card....

Does it make sense replacing the internal microdrive with a bigger compact-flashcard? So, if you use a part of your cf as swap-image in Debian it will probably have a lot of writing cycles on it. I was told, a cf-card has not as many overwriting cycles (about 200.000 or so) as a microdrive . Anyway, writing a cf-card is much slower than reading it - and might be slower than reading a microdrive.

Pro: Bigger, less power consumption Contra: Might be slower, shorter life, when used as swap

Does it make sense replacing the internal microdrive with a bigger compact-flashcard? So, if you use a part of your cf as swap-image in Debian it will probably have a lot of writing cycles on it. I was told, a cf-card has not as many overwriting cycles (about 200.000 or so) as a microdrive . Anyway, writing a cf-card is much slower than reading it - and might be slower than reading a microdrive.

Pro: Bigger, less power consumption Contra: Might be slower, shorter life, when used as swap

agree?

Good points, maemorandum....

However, please see earlier posts in this thread, like ZDevil's post #7 that has link to webpage on this subject, it appears that it might take 25 years for the effects that you refer to show up...